At the begining of last week, I had to drop of some clients in Budapest Hungary, and based on my experience in the short time I was there (1.5 days), I decided to write here a few of my impressions.
First thing that you have to do, is actually exit Romania. For this we chose to cross the border at Valea lui Mihai in Satu Mare county. On the Romanian side I could not really tell if we were heading towards the border or if it was just a dirt country road for a few kilometers, but a bit further up I noticed they were actually redoing the road, this explaining the poor condition of the.

We reached the border quite easilly and after a brief check of our documents in about 3 minutes we were in Hungary, heading towards Debrecen.

Understanding your way around in Hungary is not hard at all, but they do seem to have a bit of shortage pointing towards the right way. One example is in Budapest where we saw a sign leading us to the highway, only once and briefly and we missed it, and than there was no sign for km, and we had to turn back.

The highways are very nicely mantained, with parkings and gas stations every 20 or so kilometers. Driving in Hungary was quite relaxing, despite what the guide book said, with the drivers being impatient and agressive.

After about 2 hours on the highway, we reached Budapest. I was nicely surprised at the beauty of this capital, with its lovely buildings and lively streets. Except a few streets and a bridge that were under construction, everything was just amazing. The people turned out to be quite friendly and helpful as well. One thing to explore is the Central Market. This is one crazy lovely place.

We left the car parked in the shade on some street on the Pesta part of Budapest, and started walking along the Danube river, taking photos of about everything that came into my sight. Unfortunately I was quite tired so I didn’t have enough power to wait until evening to take more photos of this stunishing city, but here are some of the photos I took, just to give you an insight.

Time is always a problem when I travel, this being one of those trips when I wished I could have stayed a few more days to explore everything. If you are into photography like I am, this is close to heaven.

After a few more shots of the Chain bridge we crossed to the Buda side of Budapest, and took the funicular, built since 1870, up to the Royal Castle. Here we walked around through the old city, until we reached to the Fishermans Bastion, which unfortunately is under restoration. Though, the wonderful view over the Peste side, with the Parliament Palace, was worth it going up there.

One thing we did have some trouble with in Hungary, was finding an exchange office, and understanding the restaurants. Most places we passed through, we could not tell which was a restaurant, because we do not know any hungarian. Unfortunately for us, we had to be limited to McDonalds and Burger King, which definitely would not be our first choices when it comes to food.

The next morning we drove to Hortobagy National Park, and enjoyed a bit of this flat land area with the Tisza river and its channels. We walked for about 10 km in the search of Cranes, which started their migration.

What I did notice at this park is how well organized they are.

Our next and final stop in Hungary was Beckesaba, right before the border. Here we stopped to eat, and since again, we had trouble with the language, the famous yellow M helped us. We also looked at the parking pay point for quite a while, pressing all the buttons until it released the parking ticket.

We crossed into Romania, without anyone asking us anything this time, not even checking our ID’s.

Well I hope you enjoyed this short visit into Hungary.

This Sunday I spent my day with Michael and Renee, 2 Jewish Americans, in search for their family roots. His great grandparents lived in Iasi, and as many others, Michael is interested in any detail that it could lead him to lost family members…

We began our day with a visit to the Jewish Cemetery in Iasi, where in the hope we could spot the names of his family anywhere on the graves we managed to spend about 3 hours there.

As we were about to leave, at the gate we took the time to chat to Olga, the administrator of the cemetery, and Michaela and Adriana, who were visiting the graves of their loved ones. As my clients got more curious about them, Michaela started telling us the story of her life, and the story of her loved ones, who have survived or not the Holocaust in the World War II.

As she never married, she was the last one alive in her family, and she almost cried as she filled us with details of her mother.

After a few more minutes, she started unpacking some lunch, inviting us all for a snack, showing she had so much love and care to offer. Even more, yesterday I received a phone call from her, letting me know some steps my clients could take in finding details about their family in the National Archives.

Adriana on the other hand, was intriguing to me, being quite young. I never noticed any antisemitism in the people I know in Iasi, but she confirmed the fact that some do make nasty remarks towards the Jews, which is quite sad. Hopefully we will get together and discuss this subject again.

Last but not least, misses Olga, the administrator of the cemetery, is a person who seems snappy all the time, but she does love attention. If there are things you want to know about the cemetery, ask her first, else she will be all upset like a small child. She has a very funny character.

After having a wonderful lunch at Bilius House and visiting a few more places of Jewish interest, we took the time to see other landmarks of Iasi, not related to the Jewish Heritage. One of these places is the Culture Palace, built along 2 decades at the beginning of 19 century.

The exterior of the building impresses everyone, and finally they have started restoring it. Some sources say it will take about 3 years to restore, but I think they are being optimistic. During the restoration the Palace is fully closed. Nonetheless, we managed to sneak inside…seems the guards have decided to make their own visiting tour of the Palace.

It is first time when I managed to take a few photos of the main hall, with its detailed decorations and stained glass windows.

This tour that they decided on their own to create, is a visit through the maze of halls leading to the Clock Tower. After almost getting lost through those rooms, we enter the attic where the heat will literally take your breath away, and you will have the sweat running ” in places you didn’t know it could run”, to quote Renee.

Once you reached the tower, the air is much more cool, and you can study the clock mechanism with its 6 bells, which every hour will sing the Union song.

From up here you can enjoy a panoramic view over Iasi city, and especially Stephen the Great boulevard.

As I am a curious person, I started questioning the guard, and it seems the tower is open only once a year, on Iasi days (14th October). I was just about to ask him if he was aware we were in July.

Now now, I will not complain…I finally managed to see the things I didn’t thought I could, and to be honest, I believe the guards would make much better managers for the Palace, than whom ever is in charge now.

We ended our day with a view from Bucium hill over the Iasi city.